Being exponentially developing, the Greater Thames Estuary currently contains 1 million properties and their inundation would result in direct damage of at least £ 97.8 billion. Currently, the main flood defense applicable is the Thames Barrier, and its downstream rigid river defenses. Being an anthropic intervention, an evolutionary perspective indicates that longer time leads to higher risk, lower performance, higher vulnerability and higher investments. The research aims to address the vital governmental disparity between flood protection investments and energy investments, in the spirit of the Dutch approach room for the river. Thus, this thesis looks beyond the 2030 uptime response of the Thames Barrier and explores an alternative system of hybrid infrastructure that can reverse the flood risk factor to a profitable tidal energy source, creating a protection/production cycle, simultaneously defending and “fueling” the city as well as retrieving its original investment.
